Dr. Andrei Illarionov served as President Valdimir Putin's Chief Economic Advisor (2000-2005) and his personal representative to the G-8 (2002-2005). He resigned from both posts in December 2005, in objection to the government's curtailment of political freedoms. From 1993 to 1994, Illarionov served as chief economic advisor to the prime minister of the Russian Federation, Viktor Chernomyrdin. He resigned in February 1994 to protest changes in the government's economic policy. From 1994 to 2000, Illarionov was the director of the Institute of Economic Analysis.

Andrei Illarionov is a passionate advocate of an open society and democratic capitalism in Russia and a forceful and articulate critic of the political, economic, and social situation in the country.

Illarionov received his PhD in economics in 1987 from the Leningrad State University. Illarionov has coauthored several economic programs for Russian governments and has written three books and more than 300 articles on Russian economic and social policies. He joined the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity in 2006 as a senior fellow.

Ron E. Hassner (speaker) is a graduate of Stanford University with degrees in political science and religious studies and a CISAC affiliate. His research revolves around symbolic and emotive aspects of international security with particular attention to religious violence, Middle Eastern politics and territorial disputes. His publications have focused on the role of perceptions in entrenching international disputes, the causes and characteristics of conflicts over sacred places, the characteristics of political-religious leadership and political-religious mobilization and the role of national symbols in conflict. Professor Hassner was a fellow of the MacArthur Consortium on Peace and Security in 2000-3. In 2003-4 he was a post-doctoral scholar at the Olin Institute for International Security, Harvard University.

Gail Lapidus (respondent) is a senior fellow emerita at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Lapidus is also professor emerita of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as chair of the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies from 1985 to 1994. A specialist on Soviet society, politics and foreign policy, she has authored and edited a number of books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, including The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Westview Press, 1995), From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics, with Victor Zaslavsky and Philip Goldman (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The Soviet System in Crisis, with Alexander Dallin (Westview, 1992), and Women in Soviet Society (University of California Press, 1979). A graduate of Radcliffe College, she received her MA and PhD from Harvard University.

Ambassador Pascual is Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies, at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served as Coordinator for Reconstruction & Stabilization at the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, and Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia at the National Security Council.